The Holiday Downshift

It’s the beginning of January and that means the holiday season is over – time to get back to our regular schedules and normal routines.  We’ve all probably ate too much, exercised too little and generally let ourselves rest a bit more than necessary.  There isn’t anything wrong with that, as long as we get back up and back on track.  That small break the past few weeks have allowed us to take is a reality check that shows what and how we would feel if that were to be our daily lives.

Without a regular amount of exercise or normal hours of sleep, our bodies can react irregularly – we can feel more tired during waking hours or suffer soreness in the unused muscles and joints.  On top of the obvious signs, lack of sleep can also be linked to higher levels of heart disease, obesity and even an increased chance of being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.  To help get back to (and maintain) a regular, restful pattern, add ProBLEN’s Sleep-Aid supplement to your bedtime routine.  One of the ingredients, niacin (vitamin B3), in particular is a terrific addition to your regimen that helps you bounce back from the recent holiday stress.  It helps in the conversion of higher cortisone levels into serotonin (the part of that Thanksgiving turkey that makes you sleepy after the big meal).

Not only as a benefit for reaching slumberland, but the Sleep-Aid supplement may also assist in relieving your seasonal blues.  Cortisone is released by the adrenal glands as a stress response.  As mentioned earlier, by converting some of the hormone into the serotonin neurotransmitter, niacin assists you by shortening the time it takes to fall asleep.  Plus, increased serotonin is also believed to be a contributing factor in the mind’s ability to feel happy and have an overall positive sense of well-being.

So, start using ProBLEN’s natural Sleep-Aid supplement now and you’ll have a much shorter recovery period in the New Year.  That feeling of joy we had while leaving our regular lives has lessened now that we’re back in the grind.

Take it back and get ready for 2013!

Resolving to Live Well, part III

by S. Ashton Faulkner

We’re getting closer to that quick couple of weeks where we take a little extra time here and there to break out of our regular routines.  Some of us are going to be off school for Winter break.  Others will be trying to get those extra days away from work – using up any Vacation days that may be set to expire before year’s end.  And still others may just be getting a 4 day Holiday for the Christmas weekend.  Oh, and let us not forget (and Thank) those that either have chosen or been volunteered to work while the rest of us get some rest – this is just another way someone’s routine gets shifted this time of year.

As we’ve talked about, taking this time to get a jump-start on our personal promises to lose a little extra weight or generally get ourselves moving and exercising more is a choice that allows our bodies to adjust and adapt better to the changes this final month of the year brings.  This time out, let us address how our time can be spent with what may be a greater number of extra hours than we normally have at hand.  I know I’m ready to sleep in a little longer – early mornings and me have not had an easy relationship over the years – so I’ll be fine on the sleep front.  However, some folks have adjusted to rising with the sun and will find it difficult to break the habit.  ProBLEN does have a terrific Sleep-Aid that can make your rest more, well, restful.  That way you can get up around the time to which you are used and still have the energy to visit with those relatives or friends who you only get around to seeing during the holidays.

And it won’t just be your sleep that gets disorganized – your regular exercise time may suffer (or even benefit) from the extra time you’ll have.  Your body has gotten used to getting out and running, walking or otherwise working out at whatever time you’ve given it.  Exercising more, or even at different times, can get your muscles aching more.  Our HGH Plus IGF-1 & IGF-2 hormonecan get you back on your feet more quickly by improving cell reproduction and tissue repair of your stressed muscles.  I’ve written more about this product here and the terrific aid it provides for adjusting to changes in your exercise routines.

What about the resolution to ‘Get more out of Life?’  We can’t spend all the extra hours exercising.  Might as well tackle that Family ski trip (again with the sore muscles…) or make a dent in cleaning out the attic or garage.  However, even with more time, where do we find the energy?  Sleep, of course, is one step.  Another is having the energy to make use of the extra time.  Supplementing your day with ProBLEN’s Adrenal & DHEA formula can help re-balance your levels and get you to being more productive and less distracted by drowsiness.

Basically, you’re supposed to be having fun – whether it is enjoying your solo time on the jogging track or around the dinner table with family.  Don’t let your break from the regular take away from that.  Let ProBLEN help and remember to get out there and Live Life.

Resolving to Live Well, part II

Resolving to Live Well, part II

By S. Ashton Faulkner

Hello again.  Last time, we talked about how we here at ProBLEN want to help you maximize your health potential and allow you to look and feel younger than the calendar shows you to be.  Some people use the New Year as a jumping off point to begin diets, exercise routines or other attainable goals that they feel will aid them in feeling better about their selves.  Kind of like using the stroke of midnight to erase all the negative energy from one’s life and starting fresh with positive steps to creating anew.  But, why wait?

When you’ve made up your mind to start, you’re already at the point you need to be to begin re-creating yourself.  You don’t need to use an artificial date – which can give you plenty of time to second-guess yourself – to take that first step.  Don’t open this new phase of your life in a non-enthusiastic manner.  You may need to start slow, but the time of that first decision is like pouring a proper foundation for a strong home.  In other words, get your bodies moving when you’re ready, but do it in the right manner – slow and steady.

Many people get fired up during this Resolution season.  Gym memberships rise, folks re-learn how to make salads and new track shoes are bought or given as gifts.  Everyone starts off going strong, but that only makes it worse.  If you haven’t exercised in a while, your body will hurt after the first few days of a new regimen.  You may start eating less, but your stomach will yearn for more by the end of the day.  Sure, willpower is a huge component here, but that can only take someone so far.

So, go slow.  Start off with short walks – interspersed with a few quick sprints.  Don’t forget to warm up first and cool down afterwards.  Add in an HGH+ supplement and you can stave off most of the recovery time for your muscles to start accepting the new routine.   Slowly increase the distances and durations and before long, your body will actually desire to have its regular work-out sessions.  Once you start to accept the, now small, pain of exercise, our regular HGH supplement can then help to keep your stamina levels up so you can ramp up to the next stage.

By starting slow, you’ve increased your flexibility, built stamina and strength and most likely have lowered your risk of heart disease.  You can stay at this comfortable level or even move on to higher plateaus.  You should, however, force yourself to keep a steady pace.  Your body is now reacting to endorphins rapidly entering the system.  These can sometimes be a sort-of ‘false positive’ that fool your mind into thinking the body is ready to bounce about with all of your newfound energy.  This is especially true if you’ve been out of the exercise game for a while.

Your mind remembers how your younger self moved and rebounded from injury or exercise.  This can lead you to believe you can throw yourself into your old routine and that your body will react the same way.  Man, I really wish my body now could recover the way it did when I was in college…  But I digress.  Keeping to a slower to elevate exercise routine will give your body the time it needs to remember its old habits, as well.

Here is where, along with the HGH and HGH+ supplements you’ve added, you might now want to include ProBLEN’s Testosterone Anti Aging Supplement.  Your bodies’ ramped up energy and metabolism could now be experiencing low or imbalanced testosterone levels.  This is where our homeopathic formula can help.  It uses a special blend of ingredients to stimulate and enhance the body’s production of natural testosterone.  These same ingredients also aid in improving your immune system, stress recovery, better digestion and can give increased energy.  All things that, if you plan on continuing or increasing your training, will ensure you can continue past the point where the Willpower vs. Resolution battle is being fought.

As I’ve said before, it takes work to reach our goals.  Nothing worthwhile is gained for free.  Sure, you can take this time of year to make a promise to yourself that things will be better once that ball in Time’s Square drops.  But, unless you back up those words with positive actions, that is all they are – words.  Let ProBLEN help you keep you on the road to the commitment you’ve made.  Your body and your mind will thank you.

Resolving to Live Well, part I

By: Scott Faulkner

If you’ve read our ‘About Us’ page, you know ProBLEN was established in 1997 with the goal of helping people like you – people who care about their health, not just for today, but for the future.  You are looking to Live Young and Age to the maximum of your potential and we can help you achieve that enhanced Life.

What makes ProBLEN different is we don’t advocate a quick fix diet or life change to start you on the path to a better You.  We understand that in order to be better, you must care not only for the obvious symptoms of poor nutrition or lack of exercise.  You must pay attention to your body as a whole.  Our line of professionally blended supplements targets multiple areas at the same time and prepares you for the next stage in your mental and physical nourishment.

With this in mind, let us take a look at some of the top New Year’s Resolutions that we’ve all made in one form or another, year after year:

• Lose the spare tire around your midsection
• Exercise more (or build up Stamina)
• Spend more time with family or friends
• Get more out of Life
• Curb or quit our bad habits – smoking, drinking, etc.
• Clear out the clutter – garage, spare room, attic

These are only a few of the more common ones.  I’m sure you have some unique ones that could, in some form or another, fit into one of these categories.  Let us take the next article or three to explore what ProBLEN can do to help make these promises to ourselves stick and not disappear by the middle of February.  In fact, let’s begin there – with the date.

Why build our minds up to this artificial starting period when everyone knows that 4 out of 5 resolutions aren’t kept long after the first month?  The most common sense answer is to not use January 1st as a crutch.  If you’ve made up your mind to revamp your life, begin right then and there.  Do not wait and let your doubts get the better of you.  You lose your nerve and you’ll end up being another victim of lost Willpower.

Okay, the biggie: Weight Loss.  Whether it is to shed a few pounds so we can fit into our skinny jeans again or you need to lose some serious weight because of health concerns, this resolution is a constant wish of most people.  The best way to accomplish this goal is to start as soon as you make the decision – again, don’t wait for an arbitrary date to begin your new outlook.  But how to go about it?

There’s a simple answer:  get off your behind, eat less and move more than you remain stationary (a hint here, stationary is a synonym for ‘Lifeless’ – just a thought).  ProBLEN’s new dietary supplement can get you on the right path.  Combine it with our HGH or HGH+ products, along with a slow, steady exercise regimen, and you’ll be on the right path.

Start by simply forgetting the buffet line and eating smaller portions with each meal.  We no longer should feel the desire to clean our plates like our Mothers told us.  When I go to a restaurant, I’m not afraid to ask for a ‘To-Go’ box for items left over.  I eat a healthy portion first, then use the rest as an after exercise snack later in the day (or the next day).  That way, I’m not wasting anything and the snack can actually count as another light meal.

Now, especially if you make a dramatic switch from a diet of fast-food to more nutritional fare, your body will probably react in a dramatic way, too.  A shift in what it is used to can cause some temporary side-effects – headaches, unusual bathroom breaks, and/or abnormal sleep habits.  These should all be mostly temporary, but they are ways for the body to tell us it is missing something or reacting to something it hasn’t experienced in some time.  Try adding in ProBLEN’s new Digestive Enzyme/Probiotic supplement.

This dietary aid helps to support your healthy shift in digestion and allows your body to absorb more completely the nutrients from the new calorie restrictions you’ve been giving it.  Sure, you’ve cut back the portions, but that means you have reduced the amount of nutrition to which your body has adjusted.  The DE/P helps to draw more of those usable enzymes and transfer that life force to our bodies.

Toss in our newly formulated Weight Loss aid and your metabolism will be helped to make the adjustment from your new regimen.  It has specialized ingredients that help in fat burning and increase lean body mass.  The Eleuthero root extract alone can even help detoxify your liver from a good amount of the ‘bad’ foods you’ve been used to eating.

The point here is that by thinking in small, short term goals – building slowly to  a larger, long sighted milestone – you can get focused and Resolve to stick with your new outlook on living.  You don’t need a New Year to start.  Remember, ProBLEN is here to help, but it is up to you to do it right and do it for your Life.

Feasting Right for the Holidays

Feasting Right for the Holidays
By: Scott Faulkner

Over the upcoming holidays, we’ll be seeing our families, traveling, shopping, and taking time off from work or school, along with many other things that throw off our regular schedules to which our bodies have become accustomed.  That means the dinners and drinks and snacks we consume will be entering a metabolism that has had its accustomed pattern of processing our diet distressed.  Think of it as jet-lag for the stomach.

Most of us get up in the mornings, have our normal eggs and pancakes breakfasts, fiber bars, or muffins and donuts and go about our day until lunchtime.  Around midday, we then eat a standard meal that will bide us until we get home and have supper.  Basically, our systems are used to some sort of routine of two or three (sometimes more) food breaks per day.  Tiny portions, large plates, mid-meal snack packs, fruit – it doesn’t matter.  Your body is used to whatever you eat on a regular basis.

And, yes, we do throw that balance out of sync at times during the week – going to a buffet (have to cram as much food as you can to make the meal worth it), business lunches at fancier than you would normally eat restaurants, lost fights with our sweet-tooths(teeth?) – all these and more give a shove to our rhythms and turn the standard breakdown of calories and nutrition.  But nothing is like this Season to really shake things up on our insides.

A regular diet allows time for the enzymes in our digestive region to do the job of breaking down our food and turning it into usable nutrients.  These enzymes are found naturally in food, but most cooking temperatures destroy or severely deplete their numbers.  Shove irregular type foods into our stomachs, especially over a lengthy period like Thanksgiving Day – let’s be honest, when else do you combine a large bird dinner with sweet potato pie and cranberry sauce?  – and you have, pardon the pun, a recipe for trouble.  That’s part of the reason most of us get tired after such a big meal (tryptophan aside).  Our ordered bodily functions are reacting to the perceived attack on our digestion and thereby shut down non-essential utilities.

Of greater concern is that if the lessening of adequate enzymes continues, as it can even once you return to a ‘normal’ life, you may be more apt to get sick or have a greater percentage of the nutrients stored as body fat instead of going to more productive areas.  To help restore stability, taking a dietary supplement, like ProBLEN’s New Digestive Enzyme/Probiotic formula can assist you through the up and downs of the Holidays.  You can also team up on your body by adding a Multi Plus vitamin to your regimen.  That way you can maintain a healthy metabolism while slamming back some of that deep-fried turkey.

Fast World, Fatal Drinks

We work hard, play hard and generally try to put as much into our day as we can.  For years, we have been cramming more activities into the day, but there are only so many hours in that day.  Rare are the nights that we can simply rest and enjoy the relaxing moments before bedtime.  In fact, how many of us actually stick to a regular hour when we lay down our heads?

There is always that extra project to finish, more studying for midterms, there’s another load of laundry to wash or a movie to finish watching.  Check out what I have written about another benefit to getting a good night’s sleep.  The problem with staying up late begins when the alarm goes off, (weekends excluded in some cases).  The time we get up is always the same.  We have to go to school or work, to get the kids up and fed.  The day starts very early and very fast and stays that way until we can again, blessedly, drift off to Slumberland.

People deal with this in many different ways; an early brisk walk or jog can get the juices flowing, a cup of java (about 65% of American coffee drinkers start their day with a cup), cold showers or simple breathing, stretching exercises.  But then a few hours pass and the droning of the teacher’s mono-tone voice or the words and figures we’re calculating for our TPS reports weight down our eyelids.  That’s when we grab another coffee, eat another donut or splash more water in our face.  Then there are those that reach for a little plastic shot of “5-Hour Energy” – a highly caffeinated drink that has been at the forefront of an investigation into its alleged association to hospitalizations and, in some cases, fatalities over a four year period.

A recent New York Times article has reported that quick energy drinks – like Monster or 5-Hour Energy – have “possible involvement” to 13 or more deaths*.  In the filings (with the Food and Drug Administration) they cite that there have been another 90 cases linked with heart attacks, convulsions, and a single report of spontaneous abortion as well as other serious, life-threatening maladies.  To be fair, just a filing of such a case isn’t a smoking gun.  These links are hard to track down due to their “fragmentary nature.”  Statements from the makers of these drinks do stress that they are “unaware of any deaths” with a proven association to consumption of their products.

As with anything, we must have a balance.  Sure, a quick fix can help us continue our active lifestyles, but it’s only temporary.  We must take time to rest and relax and get out of these modes of running, running, running.  If we don’t stop and breath every now and again, we will end up in the hospital, or someplace worse.  Getting a good night’s rest is difficult, but can be achieved if we work at it.

Since you are here at our website, let us assume you are interested in checking out our supplements.  We can help.  All of our products are specifically blended to act with your metabolisms, not to them.  Sleep-Aid can help you maintain a steady night’s rest and allows you to wake up refreshed and ready to go.  Or (and maybe in conjunction, if you wish), take our sublingual HGH or HGH Plus IGF-1 & IGF-2 supplements for increased mental alertness and stamina throughout the day.  Both unlock the body’s own ability to regulate its energy levels and maintain its vigor and youthfulness, allowing you to go about your busy schedule more quickly and steadily.

Take control of your Life.  It is in your hands to live it in good health and spirited while staying vigorous and strong.  Let us to help you on the road to Aging Well.

 *We here at ProBLEN care about the tragic loss of any life and would like to extend words of comfort to the families of the victims. 

Sleeping away the Weight

Dreaming to Lose Weight

Have you ever hit the snooze button hoping to finish that great dream you were having or to enjoy the coziness of the warm comforter?  Maybe you stayed out late the night before and really need those extra 9 minutes…  Turns out you may be on to something, and it isn’t what you think.

A recent study from the University of Chicago indicates that there may be a connection between maintaining a longer, regular sleep schedule resulting in healthier, more efficient fat cells in the human body.  Apparently, it’s not just about how much we rush around exercising and keeping a steady heart rate.  It is also just as important that we step back and take time to relax, go to bed early and sleep late (if you can get away with it).

Boiling it down, the researchers discovered a link where their test subjects who had 8 or more hours of controlled sleep conditions had their fatty tissues be more conducive to insulin response than the group of subjects who were sleeping 5 hours or less.  Basically, when the fat cells begin to resist insulin (not being able absorb glucose), metabolic processes that lead to liver disease, Type 2 Diabetes and weight gain become more probable.

This was a short-term study, but it hints that a lifetime of habitually poor use of your slumber time can turn a person’s body into a fat-storing grain silo.  Even someone who counts calories and eats healthy portions may end up having the food saved as fat instead of as nutrition – which can end up adding on the pounds despite your best efforts.

Sure, this sounds like common sense reading.  We should be eating less high fructose foods and working out more and, of course, sleeping longer.  The lure here is that we all want to hit that snooze button – just like we want to eat that chocolate cake and take the elevator instead of jogging up the stairs – the difference being that the cake and the elevator don’t contribute to a healthy body.

If you are not already on a good sleep pattern, let us help.  Sleep-Aid by ProBLEN can get you back on track.  Our naturally formulated supplement helps you ‘turn off’ your brain and get a restful night’s sleep – not only giving your fat cells time to rebound, but letting your mind get the all-important REM time it needs to rejuvenate, as well.  Double that with our ProBLEN Weight Loss blend of natural ingredients and you’ll be well on your way to not only maintaining your target weight, but maybe you could get closer to that late teens (oh, eating pizza and burgers and sleeping until noon…), early 20’s body you’ve only recently seen in old photographs (you remember those – hard copies of the digital pics you have on your phone).

Live young and Age well – that’s the ProBLEN mission.